Saturday, April 13, 2013

Fake Somali Pirates Scam Western Journalists - The Daily Beast: "They’re the most feared outlaws in the world. Since 2005, Somali pirates have kidnapped hundreds of people—and extorted hundreds of millions of dollars in ransom payments. They've turned their stretch of the East African coastline into the most dangerous waters on earth for the shipping industry.Naturally, foreign journalists have beaten a path to the relative safety of neighboring Kenya to interview the elusive pirates. But as Channel 4 News’s Jamal Osman—himself a Somali—found out, some of the seekers didn’t get quite what they bargained for.The story begins in the slums of Eastleigh, a sprawling suburb of Nairobi in Kenya and home to a huge Somali community. There, I met Adan. He and his friends are running an industry that had been fooling some of the best journalists from around the world. Their business? Pretending to be pirates."

Another example of very lazy journalism. So what questions did they ask these guys? Pure theatre by the look of it. Hope they didn't win any awards.....